broadcast from 17th October 2017, excluding special programmes in the afternoon or evening. The only exception is the programme Las Mañanas de Cuatro of 17th November, that by not being offered on the website of Cuatro was substituted by the programme of 22nd November (the first programme available and after the last one analysed).

In paragraph 3, “Results”, data on the number of appearances in the programmes and the number of live interventions are presented, as well as those derived from a methodology to assess the treatment given specifically to the fellow debaters and interviewees who intervene. According to this methodology, “a counter-argument” involves any intervention by the moderator implying a challenge to the central argument of the collaborator or interviewee. For this article, political interviews are excluded, although some political guests are counted as fellow debaters.

From this unit of measurement, other arguments, admonishments or criticisms of the moderator, which have minor importance, will be weighted accordingly. Thus, a “partial refutation” is counted as half a unit and a subtle refutation as one-third of a unit. The range that is assigned to questions or comments which are especially sceptical or critical are counted from 0.5 to 1.00 point. Cross-examination or insistences can be counted but not necessarily considered refutations. Of course, the outline of this simple weighted proposal is orientative and the inclusion of any sentence of one kind or another may be debated, but the total number of counter-arguments is large enough to be significant, beyond the limitations of any coding system.

Therefore, all the collaborators who appeared on the panel as fellow debaters were registered. In the interviews, political party representatives were excluded.

When it concerns a fellow debater present on the panel, the counter-arguments that are counted are those carried out by the host of the programme. If it concerns an interviewee (not present and therefore with video connection) occasional counter-arguments made by the fellow debaters to the interviewee (being still connected or not) are added.

Admonishments for interrupting other fellow debaters are not counted. Sometimes, in Las Mañanas de Cuatro, the host uses the expression “well” to denote some disagreement and the will to interrupt a collaborator’s intervention. In these cases, it has been counted as a subtle counter-argument, except if much later in the programme the host repeats such an intervention to cut off the same collaborator, in which case the second “well” is counted as a partial counter-argument and the third as a complete counter-argument.

The main limitations of the study have to do with the absence of additional researchers who could have developed parallel encodings (at least relative to a sample of the total programmes analysed), checking whether relevant differences were present in a reliability test and thus refining this novel methodology.

3. Results

In both talk shows it was observed that the participants who attended the shows more frequently receive very few counter-arguments. In Al Rojo Vivo, there are a very small number of counter-arguments for fellow-debaters and Atresmedia interviewees: despite being the group which enjoys greater presence, there are 10 groups which receive more refutations than them.